


joy walks between us

by strikinglight



Series: as trees let go their leaves [1]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: F/M, Family, Friendship/Love, Pre-Game(s), feat mikoto as the panopticon, in pre-war hoshido everything is golden and happy you cannot tell me otherwise, negl this is just one big MAKE AZURA HAPPY conspiracy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2016-06-14
Packaged: 2018-07-14 23:40:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7195952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikinglight/pseuds/strikinglight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of course it would be foolish to think she could smoke out a ninja in a crowded room; it just so happens that this one is generous enough to meet her halfway. Azura knows that whatever semblance of acuity she does possess is probably more his doing than hers, that she wouldn’t be able to find him at all if he didn’t—in some small part, at least—want to be found.</p><p>It’s tempting to puzzle over what that might mean, but she lets it go. Lets it be what it is, unencumbered by words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	joy walks between us

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hachimitsu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hachimitsu/gifts).



There is a legend that the sun never shines on the kingdom of Nohr. It is the story of the First King and his covenant with the Dusk Dragon, of how he founded a country in the western wastes with half a hundred subjects and the dragon’s blood. It’s one Azura still knows word for word—from time to time it all comes back to her unbidden, the story and a tower room and half-melted candles burning sickly yellow, a blanket bunched up under her chin as she listens. Nohr’s stories are dark as Nohr itself is dark, and no good for sending a child to sleep who is already half-afraid of everything that moves. A girl buys a pair of red shoes that force her to dance forever. A man trades places with his own shadow. A lord meets a god and bargains with him for the chance to build a kingdom out of nothing.

Legends are legends, and Azura’s memories of the sun over Nohr—such as it was—come in smaller pieces. Watery light through a window. Her hands flat on the stone sill. She remembers counting those days on her fingers, learning their lessons on her own. Drink up what light you can. Hide the warmth in a closed fist. Hold it close to your chest and wait for the next one.

“…your hair, like—milady, you’ve gone away again.”

But now the years have dropped away and Nohr is on the other side of a canyon so deep it ends nowhere, and Hoshido is so full of sun every corner of the castle drips with it. So bright it always finds her. In Hoshido Azura has light and warmth in such abundance she is almost guilty for having been stolen, however absurd that might sound. (Although, she wonders, is it really stealing if the stolen object isn’t missed? “Disposed of,” perhaps, or “let go.”)

“My apologies. I was lost in thought. You were saying?”

“I was just remarking on what a fine lady you’re becoming.” The old woman’s hands are gnarled, delicate as bird-bones, but they’re steady in Azura’s hair. They take it down from its braids without catching on a single tangle, combing down the length of it until the ends pool on the floor. “Would it please you if I changed the way I do your hair?”

Nana’s face is a map of wrinkles in the mirror. Azura knows every line—she picks out the concern easily, the knowing exasperation, but she hesitates, as she always does, over the fondness she still doesn’t know how to receive. Her own face looks flat beside it. Smooth and fair and expressionless.

“Whatever pleases you would please me also.” Azura catches the lift of an eyebrow in the mirror as Nana takes a hairbrush from the dressing table. “I’m hardly a lady, Nana.”

“You are fifteen in spring.”

Fifteen springs and she’s starting to lose count of how many she’s spent as a guest in this house. Fifteen springs and still she can’t shake the thought that maybe she wasn’t made for bright places—how much time she spends groping, feeling out the world around her as though it might burn. This is what kindness sounds like, Azura. This is family, here, under your fingertips.

“Milady.” The address is brittle now, halting, though the brush’s strokes are sure, working at her hair until it shines. “Her Majesty is concerned that you’re unhappy. I’ve had your royal siblings come to me on occasion to inquire the same.”

Of course they’d want her to forget, Azura thinks. To stop this tally of years, shed the mantle of a guest and come home and be their sister. That is what it means when Sakura comes to her room in the evenings asking for stories, when Hinoka ambushes her in the hallways with offers to take her flying. _Home_ is Ryoma’s hand lingering at her elbow as they walk the grounds and her unspoken place at Mikoto’s knee by the fire in wintertime, and even brusque Takumi depositing his share of sweets onto her plate.

“I am not unhappy,” she answers, watching her own eyes in the glass, unable to say _what_ she is.

 

* * *

 

 Today Azura sits at the lake’s edge, legs folded underneath her, hands open in her lap for the new warmth. It’s blue again for the first time in months, silky all across its surface as it only is when the wind moves over it—and maybe she can learn something of grace, she thinks, from the way it thaws out every spring under a patient sun.

She catches the approach, the muted thump of feet against the grass, the indrawn breath, but she is so often alone with the water she doesn’t recognize the sounds immediately for what they are. And what she hears does little to prepare her, of course, for what she finds when she looks. Azura turns her head and suddenly her field of vision is all muzzle and dark, dark eyes. The horse at the end of them is close beside her with its head to the ground, snuffling at the ends of her hair where they tangle with the grass.

It’s a young horse, a dark bay with a coat brushed with so much care it gleams in the late afternoon light. Leggy, slender—so unlike the warhorses she sees the queen’s guard ride, with their corded muscle and hooves like hammers. Her surprise is so great it freezes her in place. She wants to snatch at her hair and gather it into the safety of her lap. She wants to stretch out her hands, lay them against the side of the horse’s head, touch the white star in the center of its brow.

“Raku! Raku, git!”

A boy’s voice sounds in the distance, startling the girl and the horse both. As one their heads jerk upward in the direction of the sound. The girl’s eyes go wide. The horse tosses its mane and whickers, and Azura’s taken aback at how much like a chuckle it sounds, that low familiar noise.

“Raku, you blockhead, don’t bother the— Please forgive me, lady, I was grazing him on the far side— Didn’t realize he had strayed until—”

The boy approaches at a half-run with his hair falling into his face and his mouth spilling words. When he is close enough he doesn’t pause, taking the horse’s halter in one hand, bending at the waist in the deepest bow Azura’s ever seen. The angle is so sharp she’s afraid he’ll tip over and hit his head on the stones.

“Please, it’s—” Azura’s hands flutter helplessly, caught halfway through sketching out some placating gesture. “I’m fine.”

“My friend disturbed you.” He straightens up, flushed and sheepish, free hand going to the back of his head. “We’re still breaking him in. He doesn’t know how to conduct himself in the royal presence.” This last with a sharp look sideward at the offending party. To its credit, the horse lowers its head in what could almost pass for a look of contrition, though Azura doesn’t miss the strangely human twinkle in its eye, either.

She doesn’t know how to tell him there’s nothing to forgive, so in her mind she takes a few careful steps back, changes direction. “I’ve never seen horses out here before.”

“No indeed, lady. They’re put out to pasture in the paddocks, but I take this one here when he’s been good.”

This is intriguing enough to keep her talking, in spite of herself. Everyone she’s met has said the lake behind the castle is lonely. It’s the first time she’s had to share the space. “He enjoys it here?”

“The best grass grows by the water, naturally. Down this way, where the white daffodils bloom.” He smiles. “It’s no surprise he came to you.”

Something in his face makes her look down. Come to think of it, she isn’t certain she’s ever seen _him_ before. Azura’s convinced she’d remember if she had—searches her memory for messy hair the strange grey-green of forests and a soft voice and kind, watchful eyes—though he shakes his head when she tells him so, like it doesn’t matter.

“Milady would have no reason to look, of course.” He doesn’t wait for an answer this time, only bows again in deference—though not so deeply now—and reaches for the leading rein looped at his waist. He clips one end to the halter, prompts Raku with a pat to the side of his neck. “Now, begging your leave, we’ll get out of your way. Say goodbye, Raku.”

At that Azura lifts one hand from her lap, almost on cue, palm up for Raku to push his nose against. He is smooth, like old velvet, his breath warm and earthy on her skin. The boy waits, patient, one end of the rope loose in his grip.

Out of the corner of one eye Azura watches him; she doesn’t know his name, she realizes, but she also doesn’t know how to ask.

Maybe it doesn’t matter. As Azura lowers her hand, he catches her eye and smiles again. Then she is watching their backs, the horse and the boy, shadows lengthening across the grass in the dusk.

 

* * *

 

When she meets him again, he’s on his knees in a doorway. The queen’s doorway, to be exact, on his way out as she makes to enter, her hand awkwardly extended toward a door that had just slid back under his touch. The situation itself is so absurd her imagination falters, doesn’t immediately register his face. The surprise that mars his prior focused expression as he looks at her suggests the sentiment is mutual.

From inside the room, Mikoto calls. “Is someone at the door, Suzukaze?”

He straightens up at the sound of her voice. His movements tighten, his face goes grave. Still the boy from the lake, but all changed as he’s now before a queen. “Lady Azura is here for you, Majesty.” His first impulse is to smile at her—that he follows it so readily betrays some of that absentmindedness she remembers—but in a heartbeat she sees him check himself. As he holds the door open to let her through, his head is bowed, his face a blank slate again. It closes behind her without a sound.

 _Suzukaze._ It’s no surprise that he knows her, but the word is an unexpected gift and so Azura holds on to it. Silently she repeats it to herself, examining the echoes— _Suzukaze._ How sound becomes a name, becomes the wind across the water.

Mikoto kneels at the table in the center of the room, whisking tea. There’s a looseness to the way she holds herself; her expression is placid, her movements almost languid in their practiced grace. Azura knows it’s too easy to misread moments like this, to assume that years ruling a kingdom of peace and plenty have made her soft and slow-moving. As she draws close, she knows the truth is something else.

“I was hoping to see you,” she says, in response to Azura’s inquiring glance at the table set with two bowls. That Mikoto does not think to send for her whenever it strikes her fancy is telling enough—with Azura she is discernibly light-handed. It’s always come as you will. Come as you are, and find her waiting. “Will you drink with me?”

She means it as a question, but in the face of such generosity extending toward her Azura finds there’s nothing she can do _but_ accept, drawing up close, knees bending obediently toward the tatami. She receives the bowl of tea with murmured thanks and a bowed head, making a cradle for it with her fingers. She doesn’t even remember what she originally came for until after she’s raised it to her lips and taken a sip.

“I was wondering if you’d allow me to walk around the town, one of these days. In a week or two, maybe, when the weather warms a little more.”

“By all means.” If the request comes as a surprise, it doesn’t show. The assent is instantaneous. “Would you need an escort?”

“If you think it best.” It’s what passes for a diplomatic answer, but she doubles back when Mikoto sends a look at her across the table, purposely only slightly pointed. “I mean, I would—I would like to go alone, if possible. Not far, just—” And here Azura hesitates, wondering if she looks as young as she suddenly feels. “Just to see things.”

Mikoto softens. “Will that make you happy? To see things?”

She doesn’t know. She’s never had to think so seriously about what she wants before. All she’s sure of is that everything she knows about who she is now, Mikoto taught her. Every bright memory, however small, every chance she’s ever had at something like happiness, Mikoto gave to her. Faced with this realization it’s easy to feel undeserving, like she has nothing at all to offer but questions of her own.

 _What would make_ you _happy?_

“It might,” she says at last. It seems to suffice—she looks up and Mikoto’s smile is on her, brilliant as the day.

“Go where you will, child. I’ll make sure you don’t come to harm.”

 

* * *

 

One morning, the door to her room opens on its own as she makes to leave it. The corridor on the other side, when she peers out into it, is empty.

The first time, against all logic, it’s easy to write it off as the wind. The second, the wind. The third, the wind. By the fourth Azura’s begun to wonder if she’s haunted, every door she walks through sliding back for her untouched. She lets slip as much to Sakura as they sit at the foot of the younger girl’s bed, trading stories as they do some evenings. This is a mistake, of course, but she catches herself too late—the words are out, and Sakura’s hands have flown to her mouth with a shaky little gasp, eyes going wide and glassy with terror.

“M-m-maybe it’s just your imagination, big sister!”

Stories are stories; ghosts in the house, however theoretical, are another matter entirely. For Sakura—perhaps for her more than the rest of them—it’s important to hold on to the idea that her home is impregnable, is the safest place in the world. Azura could swear she sees tears.

“Of course,” she says, immediately contrite, patting at Sakura’s hair. “Of course I must be imagining it. I’m sorry; please forget I said anything.”

She remains in Sakura’s room later than usual that night as a kind of penance, waiting until she falls asleep before returning to her own quarters. The doors behave suspiciously normally this time around, sitting still and innocuous in their frames, waiting for her. They continue to behave, she notes in the days that follow, whenever Sakura’s anywhere near.

Eventually the bewitchment spreads from doors to the dinner table, seizing her teacup in particular as she shares the day’s last meal with her siblings. There is no logic she can discern to the way it refills as if by magic when she isn’t looking; not now that the five of them are alone together and preoccupied with food and companionable silence. No matter how resolutely she sips, how often she brings the rim to her mouth, the liquid inside never drops past the halfway point. She sets the cup down momentarily, returns to it after a few mouthfuls of rice, finds it filled again to the brim.

Grappling for a kind of sense, her mind settles on the only possibility it can conjure, however farfetched. “Thank you, Takumi.”

He bristles at the sound of his name, his speech snappish as usual, but there’s a thread of confusion there too. “For what?”

She looks back down at the cup. Suspiciously innocent filaments of steam rise from the surface of the freshly poured tea. “You mean you didn’t pour for me?”

“Why would I pour for you?” Takumi’s frown deepens. “You can pour for yourself just fine.”

There’s a yelp as Hinoka pinches his arm under the table, but Ryoma is already rising to his feet and making his way around to where Azura kneels. She tries to stop him with a pointed look before he reaches her and begins to make a fuss, but he is ever dense about such matters. Or maybe single-minded is the better way to put it, unable to turn aside from anything he decides requires his attention.

“You look tired,” he declares, laying his palm solicitously against her forehead.

“I’m fine, brother, I—”

“And you’re warm,” he goes on, without heed. Azura resists the temptation to ask him how he can feel anything at all through the gloves he’s yet again forgotten to remove at table. “Maybe you should retire early tonight. Turn your lights down and get some sleep.”

“Don’t be silly.” It comes out blunter than intended—he is, after all, still the nearest thing to an older brother she has, and still the high prince, for all his ridiculous habits—and she tries to soften it, turn it into a joke. “Really, Ryoma, I’ve had enough darkness for several lifetimes.”

But by this time her sisters have left their places and pressed close to her, drowning out her protestations with concerned and soothing noises; even Takumi is watching her closely, albeit sullenly, out of the corner of one eye. Azura finds herself drowning, feels her brain addled by so much affection, and she can only untangle herself enough to finish her food, bow deeply in gratitude and retreat to her room. Better to follow orders now, she reasons, than be sent to Azama later for a healing spell and a thorough tongue-lashing. Or to Orochi for an exorcism, which she imagines is even more terrifying.

The next morning, it’s apples in her bed. Five of them, the first one rolling down her pillow and knocking against her head as soon as she stirs and opens her eyes, the other four buried under the quilt, nestled in dips in the futon. The fruit of all these daily hauntings—literally, she thinks, rubbing her forehead, because she owes it to herself to be just a bit wry.

“Milady?” Nana at the door. “You’re to breakfast with your siblings.”

She sits up; the apples shift in her lap, bumping gently together. Looking at them feels like being posed a riddle. Worse yet is her sense that the answer is in front of her eyes, laid out so openly as to escape her notice. A hand she cannot see, moving the pieces of her days around, casting about for what will make her feel at home. She can already imagine how silly she’ll look when all of this finally comes clear, if it ever does.

But for now, siblings. “I’ll be there directly.”

She knows for a fact that she’s the earliest riser, but she is last to the dining room that day, all of them already seated and engaged in carefully mundane conversation. There is a place set for her near the middle of the table, situated strategically with everything she needs in easy reach, and the four poised to keep a furtive eye upon her even as they go about their small talk. Spring is such a temperamental season, the seasonal drizzles without warning becoming storms, dreary overcast days marking the last breath of winter. But interrupted more often nowadays by bursts of the most brilliant sunlight. (Such pretty days, Azura hears Sakura murmur across the table. The days have been beautiful.)

It’s no surprise that they all know she hasn’t been herself; that of late she’s jumpy, distracted, likely to talk about strange things. Sakura will have gone to Hinoka for assurance on the matter of the doors, Hinoka to Ryoma, Takumi somewhere in the middle feigning unconcern. This isn’t the first time that she’s had to face them all down on her own—those four and their clumsy, hesitant kindnesses and their vastly divergent ways of expressing anxiety over her well-being—and most days she’s self-aware enough to recognize losing battles for what they are. Still, when this one begins with Ryoma spooning rice into her bowl because he insists the serving container is too heavy for her, she decides she needs to do more than graciously accede. That is, to fight a little.

She lifts the bundle from her lap and undoes the wrapping cloth, uncovers the apples for them to see—scrubbed and washed and glossy, the reddest red she’s seen all spring.

“These are for everyone,” she says, smiling.

 

* * *

 

Even breathing, Azura discovers, feels different off the castle grounds.

It’s not her first time in town by any means, though her visits over the years have been few and far between, and never unaccompanied like this. There’s her peculiar position, of course, to account for that. Still a guest in a house she’s been given the run of. Still a hostage, albeit one who lives—and this is an admission she’s too afraid to voice, most days—a happy life. And over and above all of this, still a girl who prefers to keep her own counsel and remain out of everyone else’s way, who isn’t used to being seen and heard and told she can go where she will, she will not come to harm.

Today the girl is testing herself. Maybe, at the end of everything, that’s what this excursion of hers is for. When she finally goes, she goes on her own.

Or so it appears. She’s walked the length of a few streets when she notices that she seems to be moving in a narrow ring of empty space, where no overcurious bystander can speak to her, no careless passerby accidentally jostle her, and while she’s found most strangers naturally tend to give her a wide berth, her intuition insists that’s not all it is. She can’t shake the feeling of being guarded by _something,_ even if she is aware of it as nothing more tangible than a presence. The frustrating thing is all her senses are confounded in the attempt to concretize it. No matter how many times she glances over her shoulder, scanning the crowd in vain for a face she knows or the telltale glint of light off familiar armor and livery, she gets nothing back. She is, at least as far as her eyes and other rational faculties insist, well and truly alone.

Out on the street everything is larger and louder and closer together, every shop she passes dizzying with color, vendors’ calls like trumpet blasts in her ears. She follows no real path, letting her steps lead her—past sweets and bolts of cloth and fresh vegetables, past a flute-player on one corner, an old woman telling fortunes around the next—until at last something catches and holds her eye, slowing her passage. It’s a potter’s place she finally stops outside of, the low, sturdy structure probably functioning as house and workshop both, the stall set up out front all laid out with the day’s wares. Stacked plates with intricate paintwork—small birds, tree branches in flower. Tea sets nestled in cushioned boxes. The gentle contours of flask, jar, serving bowl.

“See anything you like, miss?” The old man who emerges from within has eyes the color of baked clay, though they’re all but lost in his face when he smiles. “These are my sons’ best work.”

She should bring something back, she thinks. Some small present for Mikoto, as thanks. Perhaps also as proof of her return. She knows Mikoto of all people would enjoy what she sees here—the care and the craft, the act of shaping a gift passed hand to hand from father to child.

That she has no money with her is a slight setback. Silly of her, she knows, to have brought none at all, but all she’d meant to do was look. To see things, and then go home.

“I can’t today, Uncle.” She flushes, apologetic, but it’s a relief to find the kindness doesn’t fade out of his face at all. “But I will come back, for sure. Soon.”

It feels binding, like a vow. The old man takes it in good faith and gives back well-wishes for a safe journey home, and as Azura turns back the way she came she wonders if her steps are surer, her way straighter as she walks back toward the spiked silhouette of the castle in the distance. Always it towers at the limits of her vision, on guard over the town, impossible to lose. Again there’s that sensation of being protected by something she _can’t_ see.

It’s near noon when she crests the hill and comes out of the sun into the shadows beneath the gate, and it’s here she sees she isn’t alone. A set of brisk unshod hooves and a pair of lighter feet fall into step beside her, and Suzukaze presses an apple from the basket in his hand into one of hers.

“There’s a girl in town who’s always giving them to me,” he says in response to her questioning look, all self-conscious and shy, like he’s embarrassed both by the simplicity of the gift and the circumstances by which he acquired it for her. Over his shoulder Raku noses at the basket. Suzukaze pushes gently at his muzzle to turn his head away. “I can never figure out what to do with so many, so I hope you’ll accept this.”

She’s not sure if she responds for real or if she’s just imagining her own murmured thank-you’s. The next moment they’ve pulled ahead of her and made a left toward the stables, leaving her with the one apple, fist-sized and firm—green this time, vibrant where she holds it up against the cobblestones at her feet.

 

* * *

 

Azura slips away to find him before dawn, sky barely greying along the horizon and the quiet sleeping breath of the castle all around her as she pads across its floors, sandals in hand until she makes it to the courtyard. To her chagrin even the lightest step she can manage comes to her ear loud as a war-gong, wood on stone shaking up the brightening air. She picks up speed a little, arms folded against the chill. When she finally reaches the stables, the nape of her neck feels damp. He looks to be an early riser, and it’s unlikely that he’ll be expecting her—

The young man she nearly collides with in the doorway has a smith’s apron around his waist and a rag tied over his mouth and nose. Azura marks dark snake-trails of soot up his arms, doesn’t miss the carefully calibrated strength of one gloved hand where it grips her elbow—hard enough to steady her on her feet, not enough to hurt—or the blunt steel in his eyes as he lets go.

“Mind your step, milady,” he mutters, voice roughened by fatigue or ill-temper, gaze sliding away from her face as though repelled. Then a curt bark over one shoulder as he moves past without so much as a by-your-leave: “The foreign princess to see you, Kaze.”

Then he’s gone. In his place Suzukaze emerges from inside an empty stall, sleeves rolled up and holding a pitchfork.

“My brother doesn’t know how to conduct himself in the royal presence either. Though I wish I could say we were still breaking him in.” He leans the pitchfork against the wall with a rueful look—though whether it’s at his sibling’s misconduct or at his own less-than-polished state, Azura finds she can’t tell. “Milady, you do me an honor I don’t deserve.”

Perhaps. She is royalty by anyone’s definition, and it’s practically a fact of life that all who live and work in the castle wait on the royals’ pleasure. She knows this, knows this encounter could have played out in many more convenient configurations. She could have sent for him at midnight, or high noon, or dawn. At any day or time she knows he would have come, trailing with every carefully rehearsed courtesy behind one of the serving-girls, paying obeisance at her door—and in better clothes, to boot.

Except this is not that, not at this unnamed hour between night and morning with its feathery sky and yellow lamplight, all around them the clean, warm-blooded smells of animal and hay and newly turned-up earth. This is her coming to him as Azura, without ceremony or serving girls, that they might meet each other as they are for the first time.

“I have questions for you, Suzukaze.”

His eyes stray downward, take in her geta half-sunk into the sawdust, the pale trailing fabric of her robes already going grey at the hems, and he shakes his head. It’s not a _no_ but a _wait a moment, this won’t do—_ she figures out the difference when he pulls an empty saddle stand forward, takes her hand and helps her sit aside it in one unbroken motion. And it’s only when he’s certain of her relative comfort that he speaks again.

“Ask them. It’s the least I can do for putting you through this inconvenience.”

Azura shuffles, dismayed to find her courage running thin, the lot of it nearly spent to get her to this point. She glances down at her lap. At his face gone soft as he watches her, gentle and waiting. At her lap again, and her feet dangling off the floor.

“How do I know,” she tries after a pause, and what comes to her after that is the only way she can think to put it, “that you are what you seem to be?”

The phrasing is vague, more circumspect than she would have liked, but she is grasping. As if to reassure her, he smiles.

“With all due respect, milady,” he says, head cocked to one side to show her he’s giving the matter his most careful consideration, “you don’t.”

She frowns, not quite understanding. He goes on. “Even I don’t know what I seem, to you.”

 _I want to know who you are. I want you to know who I am._ Azura bites her lip—she doesn’t have the voice for statements like that. They’re too truthful. Too bold, even for her and the peculiar way something in her seems to open up under his eyes. She looks up at him, and tries again. Something direct, this time.

“What I mean to say is, you’re not truly a stable-boy, are you?”

He considers this, leans one shoulder against the wall with his arms folded in contemplation. It would be unthinkable, of course, to assume such relaxed posture in the presence of royalty, but it’s a relief to find he’s taken her cue—she’s not a princess today, for all his formal speech. “I’m not _only_ a stable-boy, if that’s what you mean.”

She’d thought as much. Still, it’s gratifying to hear him say it. “Then what else?”

He spreads his hands, palms toward her, like he’s giving himself up for her examination. Two can play at this opening-up game.

“Younger brother of him who will be fifth Saizo. Child of Igasato in the northern mountains.” A pause, to allow her to take it all in, and then—earnestly, without breaking eye contact, “Queen Mikoto’s humble servant and your own.”

Azura startles at his answers; she’s not so walled-off from the rest of the world, after all, that she doesn’t recognize the names. A few things come clear at this point—the magic behind her seemingly bottomless teacup, the fruit in her bed without preamble or explanation, the way he seems to see everything most of all.

“You are a ninja?”

“In training.” He colors, embarrassed by the qualification, and on the whole she finds herself more baffled than ever. “And you are my mark, by order of the queen.”

   

* * *

   
Among the handful of things Azura learns from her observations of and conversations with one Suzukaze, ninja-in-training: there are many ways to become invisible. Which is to say there are more of them in close proximity than she might have originally thought. Everyone knows who, and what, the ninja are. _Where_ they are, however, as well as how they operate—such things are the subject of no shortage of colorful rumors, but truthfully, who can say? The last thing she expected was to find herself talking to one. With frequency.

It explains, among other things, his apprenticeship with the head groom, Saizo’s with the blacksmith. Unassuming enough occupations that will place them right in the thick of things. Good places to watch from. Copious chances to mix and mingle and pass themselves off as ordinary, and at this thought Azura’s brow knits in a frown as she begins to cycle through all the faces she knows, so familiar she barely sees them most days—kitchen girls, gardeners, the queen’s personal retinue.

Then she thinks of him, and realizes she’s seen the trick to it. The mask locking into place, or at least part of it. It’s not a disguise exactly but a calculated refiguration, the playing up of certain qualities, while others recede into shadow. Hardworking, earnest, dreamy-eyed stable boy. A little clumsy, maybe, but impeccable manners and a good hand with the animals. Beneath it all something sharper, a knife-blade up a sleeve, a deftness that’s easy to miss if you aren’t watching as closely as she finds she does, whenever he’s in the room.

(Azura never quite forgets, in spite of the increasing frequency of these conversations: he never did tell her what his orders were. What it means, in this case, to be his “mark”—only that she’s the object of some mission that has yet to be completed to… someone’s satisfaction. His own, maybe. More likely Mikoto’s. And while he insists no ninja worth their salt would ever reveal their master’s orders, there’s a telltale lightness to the way he says it, like he’s enjoying a joke he can’t let her in on just yet.)

Kaze laughs when he sees her expression—easy enough, she supposes, to guess at what she’s thinking.

“We’re not so hard to find if you know where to look. Wouldn’t you say, milady?”

He’s flattering her, probably, because she won’t do it for herself. Of course it would be foolish to think she could smoke out a ninja in a crowded room; it just so happens that this one is generous enough to meet her halfway. Azura knows that whatever semblance of acuity she _does_ possess is probably more his doing than hers, that she wouldn’t be able to find him at all if he didn’t—in some small part, at least—want to be found.

It’s tempting to puzzle over what that might mean, but she lets it go. Lets it be what it is, unencumbered by words.

Even here, in the throne room before the queen, packed to the rafters as it is with suppliants and nobles, she knows how to seek him out. She knows to search the shadows at the edges of any space—to shift her glance away from Mikoto enthroned atop the dais in her golds and her ivories, Ryoma standing at attention beside her, the shafts of sun coming down through the high windows stoking his armor plates to flame—and before she can blink, before she even musters the courage to admit to herself that she’s looking at all, he and Saizo are there. So easy to identify it would make sense to think it a ruse.

The disguises are necessarily different on formal occasions—combed hair and dark ceremonial kimono, solemn faces and hands folded in front of them. They look like proper courtiers, Azura thinks, like proper courtiers’ sons. Cocooned in her own heavy robes, covered neck to wrist to ankle in stiff silk brocade, she nearly forgets herself and smiles.

Then Kaze finds her face across the room and he lets one of his own go—a small one she can barely see, the faintest change in the angle of the mouth—and Azura feels her own lips move unbidden to return it. One blink and he is fixed there, by a pillar, next to Saizo; another blink and Saizo stands alone, and she feels a by-now familiar presence at her shoulder.

“You were doing it on purpose, those first few times, weren’t you?” she whispers. She doesn’t turn her head, and from this angle she knows he can’t see her face past the veritable treasury pinned and twisted into her hair—silver and seed pearl, dangling wisteria petals. “Leaving a trail. You were letting me win.”

“Never,” he says, solemn, the faintest note of laughter beneath. “I would never do that to you.”

 

* * *

 

It’s a small test of courage to go back into town alone. It’s yet another to retrace her steps back to the potter’s shop and the little street-facing stall out front, but it’s worth the long walk to see the old man puttering among his cups and plates, taking inventory for the day as it nears its end. He beams when he sees her round the corner, skin around his eyes crinkling, his whole face alight with welcome, and she feels something light up in answer, deep within.

“Good day, miss.”

Surprisingly, Azura finds she’s braver the second time around.

“Good day,” she answers. After some thought, “I’d like a tea bowl for my mother.”

“Tea bowls on the left there.” He waves a hand toward the far end of the stall. She turns in the same direction, nods when she finds them all in a small row to one side. “I’ll leave you to browse, then, shall I?”

She smiles her reassurance, and he returns to counting out some stacked dishes while she begins examining his wares, passing her hands over smooth ceramic. She lingers over flowered overlays and glossy, glazed surfaces—wonders at the array of colors burned into the clay. A soft, rosy pink here. A deep black there, dark as lacquer.

“Which one…?”

“The blue glaze, I think.” Kaze’s voice comes out of the air—close, right by her ear, making her jump. “With the gold running through it, there. For her to remember you by.”

He doesn’t _appear._ He just has a way of fading into and out of sight, slow and gradual, a blurring in the air. So inconsequential it nearly escapes notice. Tricky in that it’s meant to confound the mind as well as the eye— _have you really been here this whole time?_

She’s seen him do it now more times than she can count, this game of now-you-see-it, but she still can’t get her head around it. It’s too much of a headache to parse those movements. On the other end of that headache is the sight of him standing beside her, everyone around them none the wiser—though she does see the old man send a puzzled glance or two his way and feels a twinge of sympathy. That will be another headache, later on.

“Did you really have to do that?” Tugging at his sleeve, hissing a reproach under her breath.

The look he gives her is solemnity itself. “Milady did ask. I only answered.”

It’s all she can do not to roll her eyes, but she reaches for the bowl he mentioned all the same, picking it up off the counter and testing the weight of it in her hand.

“I have another question.”

The words are tentative, as though she’s measuring those too. In contrast, Kaze’s seem to weigh nothing at all, coming back to her with a readiness and an ease she’s always envied.

“I like your questions,” he says, brightening. All sincerity. “You have so many of them now.”

 _Do I?_ Azura looks away from him, turning the bowl in the light, shy again. Up close it’s not just one blue but a whole spectrum—the shifting darks and brights of deep water. The sun catches on a vein of gold. As always, he waits for her.

“That all-important mission of yours—” She pushes on when she sees his eyebrows lift, stemming the tide of what likely would have been another rehearsal of his hundredfold obligations and the absolute need for secrecy. “I wasn’t going to ask what it was. Only if it’s been fulfilled.”

The line of questioning is surprising enough to give him pause. They both recognize it—that bad habit of hers again, that tendency to speak in circles. Still, Azura lets it all go; with luck, he’ll hear what she doesn’t have the words for. The other word for that is _trust,_ maybe.

“In some ways, it has.” He looks pensive. Almost uncertain, but she could well be imagining it. “Even so, I’m not so sure I want to give it up.”

His last words catch on something she can’t identify; they slip out of him like a confession. She goes quiet, turning the bowl in her hands again. Then, carefully neutral, “You don’t feel you’ve done enough?”

“Never enough, milady—the cause is too great.” Again that solemn expression, without a trace of irony, eyes steady on her face. “Or maybe it’s that I’m unworthy of it.”

It’s strange to find their usual positions reversed when she meets his gaze and smiles—strange in how easy it is, like it’s not her, or a different her than the one she knows—but it’s the only way she knows how to remind him of all the ways this past spring has taken her out of herself. All the days freely given—white daffodils by the water, her fingertip tracing over the skin of an apple, an unruly horse.

(If all that is nothing yet, she wonders, what could his best possibly look like?)

“Or maybe it’s that you’re too exacting.” She turns, the better to enjoy the single moment she’s left him without anything to say, and calls out, “Uncle, this blue and gold, please.”

This to the storekeeper, who takes the bowl in one hand and her handful of coins in another, declaiming his enthusiasm and her good taste all the while with “excellent choice, miss”-es and “very good eye, miss”-es.  As he shuffles to one side to prepare the bowl for packing, she could swear she sees Kaze crack a grin, but a glance over her shoulder shows him innocently expressionless, contemplating a set of delicately painted sake cups.

A blink; this time he doesn’t fade out of view. He’s still there, and she finds the words there too, even if saying them aloud catches at her heart a little. There’s a chance there, so, just this once, she jumps.

“Will you see me home?”

In the open, she means. Side by side, she means, but she doesn’t get to that part. He’s already beaten her to it, reached across the counter, hands open to receive—and there’s no need, suddenly, to guess at the answer.

“Thank you, sir; I’ll take the box for the lady.”

  

* * *

  

For decorum’s sake he takes his leave of her at the end of the long corridor leading to the women’s living quarters, settling the box back in her hands with his customary deep bow. She half-expects him to disappear then, or to vault over the balcony’s edge and drop down into the shadows of the trees below, but it’s perhaps an extra service to her that he makes a more traditional exit. Just a turn on the heel and a few measured steps across the floor to the staircase. Then he turns again just before rounding the corner, back over his shoulder—hesitating, like he’s not sure he’ll still find her lingering there—and it’s funny all of a sudden to realize he’s watching her watch him leave.

“Thank you for today,” she says—to the otherwise empty hallway, to the air between them.

She doesn’t have to tell him what he already knows, but it feels correct to have said it all the same. In response, he lowers his head in another bow. His pleasure, always his pleasure.

He heads down the stairs. She returns to her room, where she finds Nana with a taper in hand, lighting the lamps against the deepening evening.

“I’m home,” she says. Another thing that seems not to need saying, yet something hums through her at the sound of her own voice. And the old woman’s smile is worth the effort of a word or two, for the way it brightens the room.

“Forgive me for speaking out of turn, milady, but your color looks much improved nowadays.”

Azura settles the box on her dressing table, before the mirror. She looks into the glass, touches her own face, imagines herself somehow more alive. Not so changed as to be alarming, when the truth is that all she’s done is walk in the light more often, and talk to a boy with a silent step and an ear for all the questions she’s learning—slowly, with painstaking care—to ask. Since they met it feels like he’s done nothing but surprise her. Proving her still able to surprise herself is the least of it.

Her fingers go to the knots in the wrapping cloth, working them loose. What she’ll find, she thinks, is anybody’s guess.

“It’s not me, Nana. The days are beautiful.”

She lifts the lid and sees them nestled in the dip of the bowl—two, three, four white daffodils on carefully clipped stems. The last blooms of spring like stars in water, flowering up from the blue.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first installment of what will be a three-part series, because I'm in Kazura hell. We'll be crossing into Conquest timeline shortly, so it's probably safe to say this is the happiest installment, too. Laughs. Cries.
> 
> This is for [Mai](http://hachi-mitsu.tumblr.com/) and [Isa](http://isnri.tumblr.com/), who have been letting me scream at them—and screaming back at me—since I first boarded this burning ship without looking back,
> 
> Also special thanks to Silas and the Silas-Kaze support for the bottomless soup bowl.


End file.
